Many people assume that using an agent is necessary to sell one’s home, especially in the current housing market. However, this is not the case. Selling your own home without an agent can be more complicated, but it is possible if you follow certain steps.
Why Sell Without an Agent?
While an agent handles a great deal of the home selling footwork for you, there is one good reason to sell without one: finances. An estate agent will charge a fee, usually a percentage of the home...

Today people are looking for ways to improve their homes for better living and more enjoyment. Investing a little time and money will go a long way to transform your home into the pride of the neighborhood.
Curb Appeal – Let’s begin outside. Mow the grass, pull the weeds, edge the lawns and give the bedding areas the attention and maintenance they deserve. Liven up the planting areas with perennials for substance, and then go for color with annuals. Select a color scheme such as reds...

In the second part of this blog, instead of just thinking about the house as whole, I thought I’d focus more on just the kitchen in which adding a touch of DIY could increase the value of your home. Using a fair bit of my real estate experience, my slow but steady gaining of DIY experience/knowledge and an article I found online here at TheMoveChannel, I thought I’d write this short piece to carry on with the series!
Now no one is expecting you to have a PHD in electronics here and create ...

We live in a largish country home in a rural area and enjoy out gardens and small hobby farm escape from the city. At the same time, we by no means are ready to give up the comfort and conveniences of a modern home in that pursuit. When it was time to update the kitchen we did however want the look to match our enjoyment of the rural county living as opposed to glass, stainless steel and acrylic that has become the norm in many kitchen makeovers.
We went with slate tile (after spending...

I’m continuing this blog at lumberjocks.com because of the massive amount of spam in the blog area of this site. so sad.
If you’ve been following this, we took out a load bearing wall, redid most of the wiring, removed paneling and added sheetrock all over and designed, made, and installed a lot of the woodwork.
Today we finished most of the living area flooring. 3 1/4” variation oak. We took some of the furniture and spread it around in various configurations. Where t...

The floor is a pre-distressed dyed hickory, chosen because the hue matches the Mahogany cabinet doors
The major struggle this portion of the remodel was getting the refrigerator in to the kitchen. This involved removing doors from both the kitchen and the refrigerator, building a heavy ramp, and even so the fridge ended up with a few battle scars. But it’s in. The ramp we built for it was epic, and now we have a working fridge, dishwasher, and sink, and I’ve got two mor...

And then we got to that mysterious box in the corner: The lower part of the chimney. We knocked the plaster and button board off, revealed a cement base and a metal chimney. Opening the access hatch on the base showed a residue that suggested at some point in this 1947 cottage there had been a wood or coal stove. So suddenly we weren’t sure how heavy that metal chimney was. So I looked at Charlene, said “no problem, we’ll sawzall that sucker outta there and I’ll catch...

We have long been expecting to remodel the kitchen. Shortly after we moved in, over 5 years ago, we bought a couple of hundred board feet of maple to be our cabinets. Later that year I got a hold of a bunch of Peruvian mahogany, and I built some cabinet door prototypes, lucked into a Maple butcher block and turned that into a cabinet for the left of the stove, and built some pantry-ish cabinets for one wall, and some drawers for pots with movable dividers...
...and there the project langui...